A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies shows that Americans who speak English at home might well be living in a foreign country within 30 or 40 years.
On Thursday, CIS reported that nearly 70 million people living in the United States speak a language other than English at home, almost 22 percent of the U.S. population. And nearly 50 percent of that 70 million are citizens.
The data in CIS’s disturbing report are a fire bell that warns of coming strife and division as the country balkanizes into those who speak English and those don’t, won’t, or can’t.
That invites the obvious observation that the dwindling population of legacy Americans don’t have long before they become strangers in the country in which they were born.
The Numbers
CIS analysts Karen Zeigler and Steven Camarota found that 67.3 million residents speak a language other than English, a number that equals the population of France. “The number has nearly tripled since 1980, and more than doubled since 1990,” they wrote.
The share of the population speaking a foreign language at home has doubled since 1980 to 21.9 percent. In nine states, more than 25 percent of residents speak a foreign language at home. Two-thirds of those who speak a foreign language at home are in those nine states.
The states with the largest population of residents who speak a foreign language at home are these:
• California— 45 percent
• Texas — 36 percent
• New Mexico — 34 percent
• New Jersey — 32 percent
• Nevada, New York — 31 percent
• Florida — 30 percent
• Arizona, Hawaii — 28 percent
• Massachusetts — 24 percent
Unsurprisingly, Zeigler and Camarota wrote, those who speak Spanish at home contributed the largest increase from 2010-2018 — 4.5 million. Those speak Chinese were next at 663,000, followed by Arabic speakers, at 382,00, and Hindis at 265,000.
As for the total number of those who use a foreign language at home, the vast majority, 41.5 million, speak Spanish. “There are now more people who speak Spanish at home in the United States than in any country in Latin America with the exception of Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina,” Zeigler and Camarota reported.
The other languages are:
• Chinese — 3.5 million
• Tagalog — 1.8 million
• Vietnamese — 1.5 million
• Arabic — 1.3 million
• French — 1.2 million
• Korean — 1.1 million
And “of those who speak a foreign language at home, 25.6 million (38 percent) told the Census Bureau that they speak English less than very well.”
Other Data Points, No Assimilation
Other disturbing data points gleaned from the charts in the reports are these:
Since 1980, the number of those who don’t speak English at home has increased 191 percent, while their share of the population, again, has risen from 11 percent to 21.9 percent. Since 2010, the share has increased 13 percent.
As well, the increases in foreign languages come from the Third World, meaning the United States is importing millions upon millions of people inexperienced in living in a free society in which theft, bribery, and corruption are the exceptions, not the rules, in government and the administration of justice.
Other than Spanish and Portuguese, the data show that European languages spoken are declining.
As a practical linguistic matter, California is at the tipping point of becoming part of Latin America in general and Mexico in particular. About 16.5 million residents of the Golden State speak a language other than English at home, the CIS analysts found. That’s about 42 percent of its population of about 39.5 million. In 1980, five million, or about 23 percent, didn’t speak English at home. So the number of people who speak a foreign language at home in California has increased 233 percent since the year Ronald Reagan was elected president.
The situation in Texas is similar. About 36 percent of Texas’ population, some 9.5 million of about 26 million, don’t speak English at home. In 1980, 22 percent of the population, 2.8 million people, didn’t speak English at home. Increase over 38 years: 234 percent.
Nevada suffered the largest increase in those who speak a foreign language at home at 1,088 percent, 74,200 to 881,740. Georgia’s increase, 131,720 to about 1.4 million, was 952 percent; North Carolina’s, 130,640 to about 1.2 million, was 802 percent.
Perhaps the most unsettling revelation in the Zeigler-Camarota report is this: “Of those who speak a foreign language at home, 45 percent were born in the United States.”
If 67.2 million residents of the United States do not speak English at home, and 45 percent of them were born here, which means they are citizens under the doctrine of birthright citizenship, then 30.2 million American citizens do not speak English at home.
In other words, immigrants are not assimilating, and they aren’t likely to start.
Image: Bulat Silvia via iStock / Getty Images Plus
R. Cort Kirkwood is a longtime contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
